


At the End of the World

by twitchtipthegnawer



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Pathfinder (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Bad Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Internalized Homophobia, Internalized Misogyny, Whump, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2020-11-27 08:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20945564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twitchtipthegnawer/pseuds/twitchtipthegnawer
Summary: They say she waits, though for what they are unsure. They say her eyes are two great pits through which she consumes the souls of her victims. They say the beast which waits with her is cruel as she is, and releases a poison which hangs heavy in the air around them both and chokes the breath from all who approach. They say both are giant monsters which have ever waited still and silent and frightful. Neither have felt pain. Never have they known the touch of loss or grief. They seem, to those who whisper, an eternal guard. An unbroken shield.No one thinks to wonder where they came from. No one thinks to wonder whether thatwomanwas born, whether she lived and loved the way many others do. No one asks, "What is her name?"





	1. The Arrival

**Author's Note:**

> BOI Y'ALL READY FOR THE LONGEST BACKSTORY YET??????? I hope so because this character isn't even in play yet. She's the most spoiler of them all.
> 
> Also the scariest thing I could think to post this October was dutch angles and heterosexuals.

Wyetta Stormbreaker had her shield planted between her widely spread legs. The stone chair she was sitting in had been there so long that morning glory had crept up the back and sides, but the seat remained bare. The seat would always remain bare.

It was where the guardian belonged.

Her eyes shone over the top of the slab of metal. It was embossed, though the gloom made it difficult to make out the exact pattern. Above her loomed a spire of dark granite, itself slowly being overtaken by the plant life as well. She recalled a time not so long ago when it had been consumed by the forest, impossible to spot unless one were to crawl through thick undergrowth or climb a towering pine.

Now, Wyetta could see clear down to the mouth of the river, where it spilled into the steaming sea as it had since long before her time. All that separated her from the rocky shore was ash.

Ash and a graveyard.

Staring out at the desolate landscape, with a great beast heaving a sigh at her feet, Wyetta waited. It was all she did, as the guardian. There weren’t often things to guard against, and so instead she found herself waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

And while she waited, Wyetta thought. Wyetta  _ remembered. _

\---------------

Though she wouldn’t remember the event itself, of course, Wyetta was told that the first words her ears heard were, “Life is cruel.”

It came from the midwife who had delivered her, a tut on her tongue as though she hadn’t said something so ridiculous as to have both the new mother and new father staring at her incredulously. “To give you a child like that, Lamashtu must be in quite a mood,” she said gravely. “It’s a tragedy, it is.”

Wyetta’s mother had stared down at her squalling daughter, and her brown eyes flared with fury. “My child and I’ve both come out of this alive. She’s healthy. What’s tragic here?”

The midwife’s head had snapped between Sveinn Gudmundsson (who had clasped a hand over his mouth and beard in a gesture Wyetta quickly learned growing up meant he was furious) and Svala Jónsdóttir (who appeared, despite her fatigue, to only be getting angrier). “Well, she’s clearly cursed mum, isn’t she?”

“Good lord, woman, she’s a tiefling, not a demon! Don’t tell me you’re really as sheltered as all that.” The way Sveinn said it made it clear  _ sheltered  _ wasn’t the first word that came to mind. Smartly, the woman delivered the rest of her instructions as quickly as she could, and then took her leave.

As soon as the door closed behind her, Sveinn and Svala relaxed considerably. They leaned over their new daughter, curiously touching her tiny horns and peering into her black, watery eyes. If they looked very carefully, they could see where iris ended and pupil began, but it was difficult to make out, especially without sunlight.

“They’ll all be like that, won’t they?” Sveinn sounded frightened, just a bit.

“Not if we have anything to say about it,” Svala comforted him. “She’s our one and only, ástin, and they’ll learn quickly we won’t tolerate that kind of nonsense.”

Despite what Mama said, Wyetta Sveinnsdóttir wondered. She started wondering when she was five years old, and she was running in the town square with a gaggle of other, similarly-aged children. Mama was chatting with the baker, and in no hurry to get back home; it was the first truly warm day of the year, the last of the snow having finally melted that morning. Everyone seemed to want to bask in the sunlight.

No amount of good weather could seem to cheer Robert, though. He was sulking beside the well, his ten-year-old frame impossibly large to Wyetta’s small point of view, regardless of how her strange and elongated feet gave her a height advantage beyond her years. He pulled at tufts of grass and sprinkled them over his brown canvas pants, his blond hair hanging around his face. Wyetta, in her eagerness to chase a ball of rags one of the children had procured, didn’t see him until it was too late.

Slamming into him, she knocked him over into the dirt, and herself onto her butt. Her dress was a dark green, and she had loved it when Mama had given it to her for her birthday, so she was somewhat distraught at the thought of getting mud on it.

“Hey!” Robert said, when he’d righted himself. “Aren’t you going to say sorry?”

“S-s-sorry,” Wyetta sniffled, not looking him in the eye.

“You should be more careful. Running around like a wild animal, someone might put an arrow in you if you’re not.”

“They won’t!”

“Will too.”

Although Sveinn and Svala had never told Wyetta of their promise to her, somehow she knew to say, “Mama and Papa won’t let them!”

“Will too,” Robert repeated, clearly annoyed at being argued with by someone half his age. “They’re not your real Mama and Papa anyway.”

This, finally, managed to render Wyetta speechless. “Huh?”

“Dagur said so. He said when people like  _ you _ turn up, a different race from your parents, it’s because you ate their real baby and took its place.”

“I wouldn’t do that!” Wyetta shouted. “I wouldn’t eat babies!”

“Then how come you don’t look like your Mama or Papa? They’ve both got blond hair, and you’ve got black,” Robert pointed out.

“That’s - that’s - ”

“And your Papa’s got blue eyes, and your Mama’s got brown, but your eyes are black. And you’ve got sharp teeth. And weird feet. And a piggy nose - ”

“I do not!” Finally, it all got to be too much for the little girl. She dove at him, intentionally this time, and they were rolling in the dirt. He tried to fend her off with open palms, alarm in his large, green eyes, but she managed to get a single bite in with those  _ sharp teeth  _ before her mother pulled her off of him, shouting in alarm.

Furious tears spilled down her sheet-white cheeks while Wyetta wailed to be allowed to bite the boy again. Blood stained the collar of her pretty green dress, but she didn’t notice. It took Wyetta’s mother pulling the two of them into the bakery itself, to give her a bit of quiet and darkness, for Wyetta to finally sniffle her way through the story.

And oh, the  _ fury  _ in her Mama’s eyes made Wyetta’s look like an ice cube before a glacier.

Robert was appropriately chastened by his mother as soon as Svala relayed the story to her. He ended up with tear-reddened eyes, cradling his bandaged hand against his chest when he said, “Sorry, Wyetta, I was wrong.”

All she did in response was grumble, until her mother nudged her forward with a hand between her shoulder blades. “Apology accepted,” she mumbled begrudgingly. “And… sorry I bit you.”

Smiling, just a tiny wobbly smile, Robert replied, “It’ll be okay. Dagur will definitely think my scar is cool.”

“He will?” Wyetta wrinkled her nose. “I don’t get boys.”

Years down the line, she thought that sentence, more than any of the others, was what convinced Robert she was just like anyone else in the village. But when Wyetta’s Mama and Robert’s Mama both kneeled down to give her comforting hugs, she wasn’t thinking of that. She was thinking of how Robert’s Mama seemed so, so sorry, with a well of sadness that ran deeper than a child’s entire body.

Asking Svala only earned Wyetta a bitten lip and shaken head, at first. When they made their way down the road out of town, however, Mama explained in a quiet tone. About what tieflings were, and why people spread rumors and myths about them.

About how life was cruel, but, “We are crueler,” Svala added with a wink. “And we’re gonna make that Robert boy feel even worse when he realizes he lost a fight to a little girl.”

She thought about that. She wondered. Not for long, because five year olds rarely thought for long, but still.


	2. The Confluence

When she was twelve, Wyetta sat on the heavy fence that bordered her family’s pasture. A dozen sheep grazed peacefully inside of it, and Wyetta swung her feet back and forth waiting for the sheepdog to loop back around near her. At her side, her friend Lilja was babbling.

“And then he said he wanted to try my sweet-bun recipe if I tried it again. He said I should give it to him even if they end up burned! Wyetta, I think - I think he  _ likes me.” _

Suddenly Wyetta regretted not paying enough attention earlier. “What?”

“Oh, what am I going to do?” Lilja covered her blushing cheeks with her palms, squishing them until her blue eyes were almost forced shut. “Do I give him a bun? But I don’t know if I like him back, goodness, oh goodness.”

“Don’t you think your Papa will get mad if he finds out?” Wyetta said, for lack of anything better to say.

“A pox on my Papa!” Wyetta jerked, surprised at the strong language.

“Doesn’t that mean you like Bjarki back, then?” Wyetta asked wryly.

“Does it? Oh, I just don’t know!” Lilja kicked her feet more vigorously. Her hair was the color of cornsilk in the weak autumn light, and formed an elegant crown where it had been braided around her head. Wyetta found herself contemplating her friend, thinking first that they were still too young to gossip about romance the way the older girls always seemed to, but then… Wyetta’s Mama  _ had _ told her it was about time she started wearing a wrap under her shirts, and Lilja had been wearing one for more than a year now.

“Growing up is weird,” Wyetta thought aloud.

_ “So  _ weird,” Lilja agreed.

“Want to pick flowers instead of thinking about it?”

“Yes! Yes, let’s do that.”

As distractions went, it was good enough. Gathering even enough clover for a pair of flower crowns took an absolute eternity with how well the sheep had picked their pasture clean, but Wyetta welcomed the menial task. She wondered about boys, about how her Mama and Papa seemed so smitten and in love.

Once, she’d been told that they’d wanted to have a big family. Not by Mama or Papa, but by the tiny, stooped man who used to be a shipwright, Thorkell. He’d nodded sagely, staring out at the water, and the dry dock where his sons were building a new sailing vessel. “I still remember their wedding day,” he told her. “Svala’d never smiled at a man like that, I tell you. Not even during their courtship. But that day, she’d sparkled.”

Apparently, when the midwife first told Svala she’d be lucky to get pregnant even once, Mama had had nearly decked her in the face. It was the talk of the town as soon as the poor, beleaguered healer could get down to the tavern for a few pints. She’d needed them after the stress Wyetta’s family put her through, apparently.

Years and years of trying, and the only child Svala and Sveinn had managed had been some demonic  _ thing.  _ Though Wyetta knew it didn’t bother her parents, she couldn’t help but think. Would it, eventually? What if, when the time came for her to find a husband, she… couldn’t?

She could join a sailing vessel, she knew. Perhaps she could hire an apprentice of sorts to train to look after the sheep, if she couldn’t have any children to carry on the business. She might have to, actually, as Mama and Papa weren’t as young as they used to be, and Wyetta worried about their joints when they insisted on being active all hours of the day.

Was that what she wanted? An apprentice to take care of her land? A life of adventure? Or would she rather a wedding like Mama and Papa’d had, a white dress for herself and a veil to cover her face?

How would that even work with her horns?

Huffing, Wyetta had flipped her long ponytail over her shoulder and gone back to looking for daisies. It did no good to wonder.

Sometimes the things that occupied her mind were even more typical than all that. There was a “haunted tower” out in the forest. Everyone knew about it, and while the parents would give their children sharp looks for talking about it too loudly, that didn’t stop them all from gossipping under their breath. It wasn’t too far from town, after all, and children wondered.

At fifteen Wyetta found herself with Lilja and Bjarki, wandering towards that forbidden spot. Not that they were ever specifically told not to go there, of course. But they still knew better than to tell their Mamas  _ why  _ they wanted to have a picnic under the trees.

Snow was falling in a soft blanket, forcing Lilja and Bjarki to huddle together for warmth. Lilja’s hand was even in Bjarki’s jacket pocket, the two of them having forgone gloves out of their desire to hold hands on their trek out. Wyetta had rolled her eyes at them, but felt an odd pang in her chest at the sight. She wasn’t sure why - she didn’t even need gloves herself, just a wool jacket. Her heavy coat remained mostly unused until the deadest week of winter.

Trekking through the crunch of dead leaves and needles, their little, mismatched trio made their way closer and closer to the promised spot. The ground seemed to be rising up, a hill which forced Wyetta to wait for Lilja and Bjarki to catch up to her as their strength flagged. “You’re the blacksmith’s son,” Wyetta teased him. “Aren’t you supposed to be stronger than this?”

“Strong and, hff, fast, aren’t,  _ haa, _ the same thing!” He pouted, his red nose peeking out above the scarf which had muffled his words.

“I’m glad you aren’t going too fast,” Lilja said in a stage-whisper which she knew Wyetta could hear. “Means I’m not tripping trying to keep up and coming home covered in freezing mud.”

“Whatever,” Wyetta rolled her eyes and her head with them, making sure the gesture was a visible one to her friends. Her breath plumed in curls of steam with every word spoken.

“Wyetta?” Said a voice. One she hadn’t expected to hear, out in the middle of nowhere.

“Robert?” She was certain she sounded just as confused as he did.

“What are you doing out here?” He came out from between a pair of firs which had, until then, obscured him, only to catch sight of Lilja and Bjarki. “Third wheeling?”

Clearly grossed out, Wyetta said, “What? No.”

The other two looked at each other, then at Robert with matching dubious expressions. At twenty, Robert was old enough to officially qualify as an  _ adult  _ in their minds, and they distrusted him so long as they were on their surreptitious mission. “Yeah,” Bjarki said in what was clearly a fake-innocent tone. “We were just going to have a picnic. Nothing romantic about that.”

“A picnic,” Robert said flatly. “In the snow?”

Lilja held up the basket in her free hand and gave him a sheepish smile.

Understanding dawned in that verdant gaze. It was the only spot of bright green in the entire forest right now, standing out against the bluish and dull tones of the pine needles. “No. You guys aren’t going to go bother him, are you?”

“Bother? Bother who?” Wyetta didn’t need to fake her confusion.

“Is it the ghost?” Robert gave Lilja a belligerent look. It was the exact same puffy-cheeked and furrowed-brow one he’d delivered Wyetta, though now his dishwater hair was pulled into a braid over one shoulder, and no longer obscuring him. “It  _ is.  _ You’ve seen the ghost. It’s a man then? What’s his name? When did he die?”

“There’s no ghost,” Robert gave Wyetta and her friends his best stern-grown-up look. “You three should go back. This isn’t a place for children.”

_ Children.  _ The word rankled Wyetta enough to have her drawing herself up to her full height; though she wasn’t yet full grown, she already towered over Robert, forcing his head to tilt backwards. “We’re not scared,” Wyetta told him. “We just want a look.”

“And how would  _ you  _ feel if a bunch of half-grown teenagers barged onto your property because they ‘just want a look,’ huh?”

“This isn’t  _ your  _ property, so you’ve got no right to kick us off of it!”

“Wait,” Lilja cut off Wyetta’s angry words before she could get a proper tirade started. “So, you’re saying someone lives out here.”

“Yes,  _ lives.  _ As in, is not a ghost. As in, doesn’t want you snooping on his land.”

Bjarki sounded more confused than irritated when he asked, “Then how come  _ you’re  _ here?”

To Wyetta’s endless amusement, Robert seemed stumped by that question at first. He had a wood-frame pack over his shoulders, but Wyetta hadn’t the slightest idea what was inside the leather sack tied to it. “I’m, um,” he said, hesitantly. “That is. Uh.”

“Let me guess,” Wyetta said. “Going on a picnic?”

“Leave him be,” Lilja tried to sooth the two of them. “He’s probably just collecting some rabbits or squirrels from the traps he set the other week, right Robert?”

“Yes, that’s it exactly.”

All four of them were silent for a moment. And then Wyetta was bursting out into loud guffaws, Bjarki’s chortles only a tiny bit quieter than her. Lilja had her hands spread in front of her, as if to say she’d already tried her best to help out, and Robert’s shoulders slumped in an obvious sign of defeat. Turning around, he began to walk through the woods once more, muttering when they followed him. He didn’t stop them, though. He seemed to know it would be a lost cause.

Closer to the granite spire, the foliage was even denser than before. Vines which had dropped their leaves climbed thickly over the earth and forced Wyetta and her friends to watch their footing lest they risk twisting an ankle. Robert seemed entirely comfortable, in part because he  _ did  _ spend a lot of time in these woods. His father was a tanner, after all, and while sheepskin was his forte he used rabbits and other small animals on occasion.

Eventually they found themselves in front of a small lean-to. While Wyetta’s village was hardly the largest or most prosperous, this building seemed remarkably quaint even to her. Smoke rose from a simple hole in the slanted roof, and only when she followed it upwards did Wyetta realize exactly what was providing support to the little structure.

It rose impossibly high above them. Thin, and leaning as though it was about to lose its grip on the earth and come toppling down at any moment. She wondered if it was tall enough to form a bridge all the way down to the river when it did. It must’ve been magic, or else deeply rooted in the earth, to maintain such a precarious angle. The spire was impressive, indeed.

“Ólafur!” Robert shouted towards the building. “I brought you more furs!”

“I told ye already, ye stinking little shit, I don’t need any - oh.”

_ Oh  _ was exactly what Wyetta was thinking. Because the man that came out of the lean-to wasn’t human, the way everyone else in the village was. Nor was he dwarven or elven like the rare visitor from Varisia tended to be, nor orc like the small group her Papa and Mama had helped chase off a couple years back. No, instead a pair of horns twisted above his head, less ram-like than hers but unmistakable nonetheless.

Staring at Wyetta was the only other tiefling she’d ever met in her life.

He didn’t look much like her at all, really. He seemed much more… human, were it not for the horns and the whip-like, barbed tail she caught lashing behind him. His skin was the same fair shade as she was used to from her family and friends, and his hair was a light brown streaked with grey. His eyes - well, they were amber, which was both a color Wyetta supposed could show up in a human, and… not. He seemed almost as shocked to see her as she was to see him, a ring of white showing around those shockingly colored irises. She was so busy taking in his appearance that she almost didn’t notice the tawny owl perched on his shoulder.

“I found them wandering in the woods, sir,” Robert said haltingly, when the silence had gone on far too long. “They didn’t know what they were doing. I can make them leave, now that they’ve seen there’s no haunted mansion or anything out here.” At that, he shot a glare their way.

Forgetting herself for a moment, Wyetta stuck her blood-red tongue out at him. Shocked, he simply stared at her for a moment, and then the man - the tiefling -  _ Ólafur  _ barked a laugh. It startled Robert even more badly, making him jump into the air like he was only a skittish child again (the owl only ruffled its feathers a bit, evidently used to the sound). Ólafur had a hoarse voice and his mirth sounded terribly close to a cough, but then he was waving at them, almost dismissive.

“Well alright then ye cunts, if ye’re so eager to see the Guardian, ye’ve found ‘im eh?” He clapped his hands over his chest and then gestured to their surroundings. “Are ye impressed? Will ye fall down to yer knees in awe?” Obviously neither of these things happened, and the smile wilted from his face. He didn’t seem mad, per se, not like they’d denied him the reaction he’d expected. More than anything, he seemed… sad.

“Back where ye came from then. I got no time for a bunch of assholes farting around and making me job harder than it needs to be. Fuck off, ye hear me?”

“Told you you shouldn’t have come,” Robert muttered at her. “Hey, Mr. Ólafur, I just need to deliver these to you. Please? If you let me in, I’ll make you some tea, too.”

Two things stood out to Wyetta about this. The first was that Ólafur had called himself the  _ guardian,  _ though she hadn’t the slightest what that phrase meant. The second was that Robert’s Mama, the woman who had hugged her so long ago, was named…

But she must’ve been wrong, mustn’t she?

“Fine, then,” Ólafur had said. “If ye babes want to spend time with a crotchety dick like me, be me guests. Mind the smell though, ye go and puke in me house and I won’t be held responsible for what I do to ye.”

Outside, Wyetta hadn’t the slightest what he’d meant. It became obvious as soon as they entered his home, however. The strong scent of sulfur pervaded everything, as though a henhouse worth of rotten eggs had been trampled under his careless feet. But no, Wyetta realized, the smell must’ve been coming from  _ him. _

Whatever misplaced jealousy had tried to take root in her heart at his oh-so-human appearance crumbled away like sand beneath a tide.

Politely as possible, Lilja had covered her nose with the sleeve of her long coat as they entered. Still, she looked a bit pale, while Bjarki was outright  _ green.  _ Only Robert seemed utterly unaffected, setting down his pack and untying the drawstring which kept his leather bag closed. Out he pulled a newly tanned sheepskin, still smelling faintly of ammonia. It was nothing compared to the sulfur, of course. 

After that was a surprising amount of flour, and dried mutton, and even a small glass bottle of salt and herbs. Lastly, he revealed an oilcloth bag, which he brought to the ceramic stove in the corner and slowly sprinkled into the water that was already heating there. The owl flew to his shoulder to peer at his work, and Robert only spared it a single-finger scratch on its head.

Wyetta learned a few things, that day. Like how quickly Lilja and Bjarki could be rendered bored by even a mysterious tiefling living in the woods. As it turned out, no amount of mysterious granite spires could keep them interested when they had a perfectly good picnic basket and one another at hand. Wyetta didn’t mind seeing them traipse off together; she expected they’d be engaged before their families thought them ready, at this point.

She learned that she’d been right, when she’d wished to be wrong before.

“Mother’s worried about you,” Robert said, as casually as he could. It wasn’t very - his back was to them, his eyes on the teapot and a clear tension in his shoulders.

“If ye just want to talk to me about me damned crotch droppings, ye can take ye tea and begone with ye!” He stamped his foot, and Wyetta could see it, in the shape of his proud, straight nose.

“You should’ve told me about your grandpa, Robert,” she said. “Maybe then I wouldn’t have bitten you as hard as I did.”

Jumping a bit, Robert half-turned around. “You still remember that?”

_ “Bit  _ him?” Ólafur looked between them for any sign of a private joke, and when he didn’t see one, he barked that laugh again. “He told me it was a  _ cat.” _

“I suppose I was the right size,” teased Wyetta.

Though it was hard to tell, she thought Robert’s ears might’ve been red with a blush. It made her heart do something. Something odd, something she hadn’t felt before.

Next, Wyetta learned what it meant, that Ólafur had called himself the Guardian. She didn’t learn all the details that day, of course, but when she started to head out after an afternoon spent surrounded by that stench and language foul enough to match it, she knew one thing. The most important thing. The cruelest thing.

Fidgeting like a child about to ask for a present he knew his parents couldn’t afford (like a boy about to ask out a girl whose father had forbidden him from doing so) Robert had opened his mouth and said, “Mr. Ólafur, do you think… if I come next week…”

“The answer’s still no.”

Already, Wyetta knew that it was unusual for such a sentence to come out without at least one insult and a half dozen curses attached. And so she didn’t comment on it, not for a long time on the walk home, even when they came across the place where Lilja and Bjarki had put down their blanket for lunch and interrupted what was quickly becoming  _ improper conduct. _

Her mind remained in that little cabin, even as her face smiled and her ears listened and her tongue spoke. She dropped Lilja off at her house, Bjarki going his own way afterwards, but Robert seemed reluctant to leave her at her parents’ door.

Words hung unsaid in the air between him. Either youthful foolhardiness was going to spill them, or else a wisdom beyond their years.

“Was that why Dagur talked shit about tieflings?” She blurted.

To her surprise, Robert wasn’t offended. Instead, he laughed, and whatever else he’d inherited from his grandfather, it wasn’t that harsh sound. To Wyetta, it sounded like wind chimes. While her ears were still ringing from that gorgeous noise, he said, “You don’t pull your punches, do you? You’re not wrong either, though.”

Silence stretched between them, but it was lighter, now. Just before she could open her mouth to tell him she needed to go back inside, he said, “He can’t leave, you know.”

“Ólafur?” Robert nodded. “Why not?”

“There’s always a guardian, and they can’t leave the spire. It’s a curse.”

“So we weren’t too far off with all the talk of a haunting?” Wyetta tried to tease.

Robert smiled, but it was a tired expression. “I guess not.”

Life was cruel. Especially, Wyetta thought, to people who didn’t deserve it.

Remembering that would be hard, though. It would be so, so hard. Not right away, of course. Not when, come Wyetta’s birthday, her Mama fell ill.

Then it was all too easy.


	3. The Ardency

Quite possibly the worst part of Mama dying was how little things changed. Papa was more tired now, but he didn’t seem so sad as Wyetta felt. She almost begrudged him that. She wanted to shout at him, to pound her fists against his chest, to  _ demand  _ that he cry as she did.

But then every time she found herself crawling into his bed, as though she were six again and not a full sixteen, she couldn’t do it. She could only occupy the cold space that had once cradled her mother, and sob into Papa’s beard. He stroked her hair with hands made coarse by years and years of carding and shearing wool, and she wondered how he could be so gentle even despite it. She’d helped him butcher sheep before; yet she couldn’t imagine him capable of killing so much as a fly when he held her.

“She loved you so much,” he murmured to her, one night when the moon was high and she still hadn’t calmed. His voice was hoarse with disuse, or perhaps unshed tears. “She wanted you so badly. The midwife said… she said that Svala might die, if she insisted on having a child.”

Stiffening, Wyetta made to pull away. She hadn’t heard this before! She’d known it had been hard for them, but not - not this!

Before she could protest, he continued. “Svala didn’t care. Told the midwife that it was none of her business, even. And when I told her I wasn’t sure I wanted a child at the expense of her life, she laughed at me. She said that I would change my mind the moment I laid eyes on you. And… when you were born… that midwife held you before I did. I thought, for a second, maybe Svala was wrong. Maybe, if you didn’t look like her… but you know what? I was wrong then, too.

“All I needed was one second with you in my arms, and I knew it was worth it. Everything. Even in the future, too, no matter how hard things got. Your Mama was always smarter than I was, you know. And I think you inherited all of her brains even if you didn’t get her hair or her eyes.”

When Wyetta tilted her head up, she saw that Papa  _ was  _ crying. Big, fat, silent tears that didn’t put a hitch in his voice, had only made it go deeper and more full of gravel. Like he was grinding his sadness to pieces inside his throat. And abruptly she hated herself for wishing that he’d hurt like she hurt, because losing a spouse must’ve been worse than losing a mother. After all, every child who lived long enough would become an orphan, eventually.

“Tell me something about her. Something I don’t know,” Wyetta said suddenly.

Papa seemed surprised for a split second, and then he smiled, He wiped under his eyes with a quick movement Wyetta would’ve missed if she hadn’t been looking directly at him, and then gave her her wish. “Svala… your Mama, she hated taking baths. She hated getting wet at all, actually. When you were a toddler you would splash her with water and she would scrunch her whole face up like old Thorkell does when someone curses in front of him.”

By the end of the night, Wyetta felt better. She still felt like life was cruel, but people? People could make it kinder through sheer bloody force of will. And by the end of the year, she’d become more sure of that than ever.

Dagur and Robert were lounging against the side of the tavern together, a pint in either of their hands. They’d just stepped out for the moment to get some fresh air, Wyetta knew, or maybe one of them had needed to relieve himself. Either way, their pants were up  _ now,  _ and Wyetta fearlessly called out, “Is that a pair of vagabonds I see?”

“We’re paying customers,” Robert pointed out, raising his glass.

“None of your business, ugly,” Dagur spoke over him.

Both Robert and Wyetta were surprised by the random rudeness of his statement. “Excuse me?” She said. It was all she  _ could  _ say.

“You heard me,” he replied. “Fuck off, it’s past curfew for little girls.”

_ “Excuse  _ me?”

“What, are you deaf on top of - ”

Had he finished his sentence, Wyetta would have. Would’ve. Well, she wasn’t  _ exactly  _ sure what she would’ve done, but she  _ did  _ know she’d inherited her mother’s temper. And she knew that she was bigger and stronger than him, already. He was more slight than Robert, and around the same height, so if it came to a fight she knew who would win.

Of course, it  _ didn’t  _ come to a fight, because Robert was suddenly standing between Wyetta and his best friend, and his hands were in fists. “You shut up, right now,” he demanded. “Or else I’ll make you.”

Dagur actually stumbled back a step, until the tavern wall bumped him and “Are you standing up for the freak?” It was hard to tell, with only the full, April moon to light him, but Dagur looked strangely hurt. “What, do you  _ like  _ her or something?”

“Please, we aren’t children anymore,” Robert rolled his eyes, but Wyetta thought he was probably blushing.

“I can fight my own battles, you know,” she told him with a tap on his shoulder.

“S-still!” He sidled off to the side, so he was no longer obviously shielding her. “Dagur, if you’ve got a problem with Wyetta, why not handle it like adults?”

“What, with an arm wrestling match?”

Dagur and Robert stared at her. “Arm wrestling?” Robert mused.

“Piss off,” Dagur spat.

“Are you afraid I’ll beat you?”

Weren’t those the magic words, when it came to boys - or  _ men -  _ with a chip on their shoulder? It didn’t matter if Wyetta was called a monster, they still saw her as a woman, and it didn’t matter if women could be adventurers and soldiers, they still wanted to prove she was  _ less.  _ Wyetta knew most boys grew out of it eventually, but Dagur seemed a bit behind his peers in that respect, and so he accepted her challenge and chugged the rest of his mead before leading the way back into the tavern.

Despite being plenty old enough to drink, Wyetta hadn’t really spent time in there, and certainly not so late at night. She was looking about, intrigued even as her fellow villagers gave her curious looks. Only Robert nudging her got her to come back to herself and sit down opposite Robert at one of the worn, wooden chairs.

As soon as Dagur had his elbow braced on the table, Wyetta clasped his hand. She was surprised, because it was a bit harder than she’d expected. Dagur was using some kind of leverage against her, she realized; she had to stiffen her wrist. Of course, when she did, she pushed harder, and harder, until his shaking hand rested against the scarred table.

Someone hooted in victory, and Wyetta was surprised to realize it was Robert. “Me next!” He declared, shooing Dagur away before the boy could get indignant or angry.

“You?” Wyetta looked between them. “But you’re not mad at me, are you?”

“Just for fun, come on.”

So she took him up on his offer. This was harder than Dagur, not just because Robert was stronger. He was also  _ smiling,  _ the apples of his cheeks showing two bright splotches of color. His eyes glittered in the firelight, and, and,  _ and. _

He laughed again when she beat him, windchimes in the stillness of the night.

“Looks like you’ll never stop beating me, huh kitten?” He teased. Wyetta flushed, though she was sure it wouldn’t show through her skin, and looked down at where the little ring of scar tissue pressed against her palm.

“More like a wolverine,” Dagur muttered. “Or a skunk.”

“Sorry about the scar,” Wyetta said instead of reacting to Dagur.

“It’s fine,” Robert seemed more relaxed than she’d ever seen him before, all spread out comfortably in his seat. “Women think scars are badass, anyway.” Wyetta almost missed his next words when she saw Dagur’s flinch. “Though they might not like my having another lady’s mark on me.”

“Hm?” Wyetta didn’t know what he meant.

And then someone was walking up to her - the youngest of Thorkell’s sons, she realized, with a pair of pints in his hands. He offered one to her, a gleeful grin on his face, and asked to join in on the fun. Robert’s conversation was left unfinished. The first time Wyetta got properly drunk was that night, and then Robert had to walk her home with an arm slung around her shoulders, coaxing her into singing the shanties sailors brought into their harbor with him.

“You can’t carry a tune in a bucket,” he teased her.

“And you’ve got the voice of an angel,” she teased back.

Though she wasn’t entirely sure why, yet, she liked making him blush.

Papa wasn’t too happy to hear her wailing along to Robert’s tune, but he sent the boy along with only a mild warning and a mutter of, “He’s too old for you,” directed half at Wyetta and half at himself. Wyetta let him think whatever it was he wanted to think, since she was abruptly getting too sleepy to care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I write Wyetta's backstory sad because I'm sad? Who knows. Emotions only rly exist for projecting onto your dnd characters, right?


	4. The Rumination

Of course, the next day, she got to thinking about what she’d seen. What she’d noticed. And then she got to  _ wondering. _

Her expertise in romance was… well, approximately nill. But Lilja and Bjarki had gone through dozens of arguments, and and it was Lilja who the other local girls went to when they wanted help screwing up the courage to ask for a date. And so, Wyetta went to her. Lilja’s immediate response upon hearing the topic of their conversation was a blurted, “Did Robert finally ask you out? Oh goodness, but that’s so  _ exciting.” _

“Uh, no? I’m here to ask about Dagur.”

All the joy drained out of Lilja in an instant, and she furrowed her delicate brows together. “What do you want with  _ him?  _ You don’t like him, I know you don’t.”

“Eugh, no, of course not. I think, er, I mean. Lilja, you know Thorkell’s eldest son?”

“What, Kari? Of course, why?”

“You know how there’s,” Wyetta fidgetted, feeling a bit weird just bringing it up. “Rumors? About him, I mean.”

“Rumors…” Lilja seemed to think for a moment, a far-away look entering her eyes, before she snapped back to the present. “Oh! You mean how he likes men!”

Even though they were in the pasture again, and no one was around to listen in, Wyetta felt compelled to glance both left and right to make sure they weren’t being eavesdropped on. “Yeah, that. I think, maybe, Dagur does as well.”

Gasping, Lilja clasped her hands in front of her mouth. “Oh, really? But you don’t have any proof, do you. And what did you want  _ me _ to do about it? Do you want me to set up Dagur and Kari? Oh oh  _ oh,  _ that could be so romantic, but then Kari is five years older than Dagur - not that I think  _ you _ would care, of course.”

As always Wyetta was left blinking, and only able to respond to the last of Lilja’s sentences. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing,” Lilja sniffed. “Your ram’s trying to eat your skirt.”

Sure enough, Wyetta squawked and backed up, then promptly ended up yanking on the poor ram until he was forced to let go. He still seemed a bit sulky about it, though.

Talking about such subjects felt rude, and so Wyetta tried not to. And yet she couldn’t  _ ignore  _ it when Robert showed up at her house, sheepishly asking if she wanted to visit his grandpa with him. “Dagur was supposed to, but he’s been in a strange mood lately,” Robert confided on the way there. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He cancelled on me just this morning with absolutely no explanation.”

“Very odd,” Wyetta agreed.

Robert narrowed his eyes at her until their new-leaf color was obscured by the dark sweep of his eyelashes. “You know something, don’t you.”

“Me? No, I don’t know anything, why?”

Her nervous laugh got him to respond in kind, at least. Even if he was laughing  _ at  _ her rather than  _ with  _ her.

Ólafur wasn’t any happier to see Wyetta now than he’d been last time. Even less so, in fact. She was no longer a pleasant surprise, and instead just an unwelcome hanger-on tagging along with his pest of a visitor. Still, Robert soldiered on, practically forcing his way inside to make that refreshing pine tea again. It could almost chase away the sulfur stench.

Under his breath, Ólafur was muttering something to the owl sitting on a perch. It tickled at the edges of Wyetta’s mind, too quiet to properly make out the words and yet… there was something familiar about them. As subtly as she could, she leaned closer, and closer, and then burst out, “How do you know that!”

“Know what, ye bloody dumbass?” Ólafur grumbled, curled around his incongruously cute teacup. “How to speak abyssal?”

“A-a-abyssal?” Wyetta clapped a palm over her mouth, and Robert looked between her and his grandfather nervously.

“Aye, ye’ve been dreaming in it or sommat, haven’t ye? Well, mystery solved, it’s the language of me ancestors it is. Me ‘n yours, I suppose. Heh.”

Faintly, Wyetta was aware that she was sitting down at the tiny table that occupied the one-room house’s central space. There were three chairs there, and Wyetta was suddenly struck with the thought that, when Robert was younger, they’d probably been for him and his mother. It made the thought of Ólafur (of  _ herself)  _ speaking in the language of demons less terrifying, somehow. They were still just themselves, no matter their bloodline.

For his part, Robert didn’t seem terrified of the revelation at all. Perhaps he’d known all along, since Ólafur had been a part of his life from the moment of his birth.

Just like last time, Robert tried to ask something before they left. Something about training. Something about the giant shield which leaned against the wall, almost as tall as Wyetta herself was. But Ólafur was firm in his rejection, even as Robert turned to leave, and pulled Wyetta with him. “You’ll need to pick someone someday, Mr. Ólafur,” Robert insisted. “And it might as well be me. I  _ want  _ the job.”

“Fuck off and leave me to me sulking,” Ólafur replied.

Wyetta only brought up her question when they were well out of sight of the tiny lean-to. “Do you want to be the next guardian?”

Utterly unsurprised, Robert smiled up at her. “Should’ve known you’d figure out what that was about. Yeah, I do.”

“He won’t let you?”

“He’s a stubborn old bastard,” Robert shrugged. “Thinks just because the job ruined  _ his  _ life, it means no one else could ever be happy doing it.”

This seemed heavy to Wyetta, like private family business. She wouldn’t have pried, though curiosity had words climbing up her throat like they were scaling a cliff-face, and one look at her made it all too obvious. Perhaps that was why Robert kept explaining? Or perhaps it was because he just wanted someone to talk to. Someone who, unlike Dagur, wasn’t going to lash out at him when they felt insecure about their place at his side.

“The guardian is stuck in place, right? And I guess my grandma didn’t like being so isolated from everyone. She took my mom and moved closer to town, and, well. Grandfather got lonely. But Mother, she never resented it, you know? Someone has to do the job. If they don’t, something terrible will happen.”

“What  _ kind  _ of something?” Wyetta finally asked.

“A curse. I mentioned it to you before, didn’t I?” He paused, then cast his eyes over his shoulder, their color almost emerald under the dappled shade of the trees. “One of the Linnorm Kings is buried there.”

_ This  _ revelation made Wyetta gasp and stumble, only avoiding face-planting when Robert caught her by the arm. She knew who the Linnorm Kings were.  _ Everyone  _ knew who the Linnorm Kings were. The fiercest of warriors, who defeated an immense, dragon-like Linnorm to earn their place as royalty. Of course, that rank came with a downfall the likes of which the other kingdoms only saw in their nightmares.

For, upon dying, each Linnorm cursed the creature that slay them. Some of those curses were terrible, terrible afflictions, but Wyetta had never heard of one that could haunt its victim from beyond the grave. She shuddered at the thought, and her nightmares were full of icy waters, fearsome storms and heaving earth. She only woke when a piece of the ground thrust upwards as though it were a sword through the flesh of soil, and carried her with it to the clouds, to the flashes of lightning and freezing rain, upwards until she could see the moon again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man AO3 really doesn't like the extremely norse naming scheme in this part of Pathfinder's universe. Nor does it like pathfinder's made up words, tbh, but that one makes more sense. If there's any misspellings in here that slipped past me because every other word has a little red underline in AO3 (and because _nothing_ shows up as a misspelling in google docs, for reasons I _really_ don't understand) then I'm sincerely sorry!


	5. The Unspoken

Waking to tears on her face wasn’t new, but she wasn’t quite sure  _ why  _ she was crying, and it frustrated her.

In an effort to - she wasn’t sure. Find out the meaning of her dream? Make up for having sent Dagur on a path that diverged from his dearest friend, as accidental as it may have been? Anyway, in an effort to fix  _ something _ which Wyetta didn’t think was fixable, she went to visit Ólafur more often. At first just inviting herself along on Robert’s weekly visits, and then going on her own.

To her surprise more than anyone else’s, she found herself squinting at a teacup that was almost empty one day in early fall, and muttered something. Ólafur tilted his head, and said, “Speak the fuck up girlie if ye want any chance of me not kicking ye out.”

“Will you train me? Instead of Robert?”

“Eh?” Ólafur stared at her, as though he’d heard wrong. And when she didn’t provide an explanation, he repeated,  _ “Eh?” _

“I just thought - you don’t want to teach him because he’s your grandson, right? And you don’t want him to suffer. Well, I’m no relative of yours, and I don’t plan on marrying or having children. My best friend is already set to be wed soon as the harvest is finished. I don’t have anything to lose, save a few sheep which might work well as a wedding present. So. Will you train me?”

Even if he rejected her, Wyetta mused, it was worth asking just to see him gaping at her. His mouth was open wide enough to catch flies.

Snapping it shut with a  _ click,  _ Ólafur turned away from her to stare at the door. A beat later, it creaked its way open, revealing Robert. “Sorry, Mr. Ólafur, I know you didn’t expect me today but I think I left my - Wyetta?”

Like a frightened rabbit caught in a trap, Wyetta stared at him. Why did she feel guilty? She hadn’t done anything wrong. Robert didn’t have a monopoly on his grandfather. So why?

Before she could stammer out some kind of excuse, Ólafur slapped his knee and laughed. Harsh, grating, but a relief that lifted the weight of boulders off of Wyetta’s shoulders as soon as she heard it. “Ye sure did leave yer Wyetta! Alright ye persistent bastards, alright,” he conceded. “I’ll train ye if ye can promise to keep up with me. Me old bones might be more fragile than when I was shitting in a diaper, but that don’t mean I got no fight in me yet.”

He hadn’t been kidding. Robert’s studious seriousness got him knocked down within seconds of taking a stance, because he hadn’t expected Ólafur to  _ kick  _ him and ignore the stick serving as his practice sword. And then Wyetta was crashing to the ground next to him, since her laughter had distracted her a moment too long.

“Well? Can ye keep up or not?”

Turned out that the answer was a resounding fucking  _ no.  _ Wyetta growled down at the mulch beneath her feet after having been knocked down again, and again, and voiced her thoughts between the clenched bear trap of her mouth. “What’s the point of this? You’re just knocking us down over and over again.”

“Use yer shitty brains, and maybe ye can figure out  _ why.  _ And how not to have it happen again.”

A gentle hand squeezed Wyetta’s shoulder. She followed the line of it up to Robert’s face (his cheek was bleeding, cut by a rock hidden beneath the leaf-litter). “Maybe if we attack him both at once?” He offered, “He’s fighting dirty so, so should we?”

Although Ólafur clearly hadn’t wanted them to land on  _ this  _ solution, it did work. They managed to wipe him out within thirty minutes of implementing their plan, and even his lashing tail couldn’t correct his balance before he fell down.

Many, many days passed the same way after that.

Wyetta had always been strong, always been fast. It was an advantage of her biology, she thought. That and her fearless tendency to rush headfirst into dangerous terrain and situations. But Ólafur was making her  _ strong,  _ and Robert alongside her. Sweat stuck his shirts to his chest and revealed steadily more and more chiselled pectorals. She averted her eyes.

Before she knew it the day had come for Lilja and Bjarki’s wedding, and Wyetta was completely unprepared. Even more so than she’d expected; when her father tried to fit her in her nice dress, it didn’t fit.

Sveinn stroked his beard in thought, musing, “Well,  _ this  _ is a problem,” while Wyetta sat with her back bared and the single button he’d managed to get secured straining. She was just about to give up and rush into the village to beg the dressmaker for something last-minute, when there was a knock on her door. It was one she knew well. A polite, hesitant knock she’d heard dozens of times when arriving to Ólafur’s house.

Sure enough, Robert was waiting when she opened the door, only to flush bright red at her state of disarray. He turned his head and scrunched his eyes shut, then thrust his hands out towards her. In them, he held a dress, maroon with what looked like little, green leaves sewn into it in silk accents. Wyetta looked down at it, then back up at him, completing the loop several times before finally asking, “Is this for me?”

Still keeping his eyes shut tight, Robert nodded. He all but threw the dress at her and then rushed back down the way, clearly too embarrassed to say anything. Looking down at it, though, Wyetta was certain he’d realized that their training had affected her as much as it had him. Maybe he’d needed to get new clothes tailored for the event, as well.

Turning back around revealed that Sveinn had witnessed the whole embarrassing affair. He’d stopped stroking his beard in favor of a fond, sad look, and told her, “You know, I think that boy is rather interested in you.”

His words echoed long into the ceremony between Lilja and Bjarki. Wyetta felt somewhat bad, wanting to pay attention to the most important day of her best friend’s life. But she couldn’t stop thinking about it, especially not when it came time for Lilja to throw her bouquet. Somehow the roses, which were entirely out of season, had been frosted along the edges of their petals with a spell that had kept them fresh. They were beautiful, and Lilja turned around and threw them, and Wyetta knew she was aiming for  _ her. _

Luckily (unluckily?) Lilja had terrible aim even when she could see what she was doing. The bouquet sailed over all the eligible maidens who were clumped around Wyetta, and went straight into the hands of, of all people,  _ Dagur. _

Flushing, the man held the flowers out at arm’s length as though they carried some infectious disease. Most of the women were laughing, but Wyetta wasn’t. She’d caught that, just before everyone else had turned around, Kari had stepped away from Dagur. He’d been leaning in close to whisper something, though  _ what _ Wyetta couldn’t guess at. He was one of the few men in the village as tall as Wyetta was, and his lanky limbs carried a boyish sort of charm. She’d heard that he looked a lot like how Thorkell had, in his youth.

Handsome enough, she supposed. And she told Dagur so once the festivities began in earnest.

“Wh-what?” Dagur was still holding the bouquet, now as if it was a shield against her.

“He’s handsome,” Wyetta said. “He has a symmetrical face. Lilja told me that’s very important.”

“Do you… do you like him?” Dagur said it, but clearly didn’t think it was accurate.

“No, not at all. I was just thinking.”

“Why pay the compliment to  _ me,  _ then? Shouldn’t you be talking to  _ him?” _

“I suppose,” Wyetta looked down, then sipped the wine Lilja had handed her. “Robert wants you to spend more time with him, you know. He’s been lonely.”

“Why? Aren’t you enough for him?” Dagur seemed to regret his waspish tone almost before the words were out. “Sorry. I know I’ve been, uh, pretty fucking rude to you, huh?”

“It’s not your fault,” Wyetta soothed. “Robert was your closest friend, right? And if you were going to visit Ólafur with him, you knew he wanted to move out of the village. That’s enough to make anyone feel a bit possessive.”

Now Dagur was gaping at her much the way Ólafur himself had not so long ago. Was it Wyetta’s fault? Was she too blunt? Unlike that time, Dagur didn’t burst into laughter, only shook his head slowly. “Are you really that oblivious? It isn’t a - a joke or, something?”

“Huh? Why would I be playing a joke?”

Shaking his head once more, Dagur held the bouquet out to Wyetta. “Take this. You need all the help you can get,” he told her.

“...Okay?”

“And  _ I  _ need a drink!” Dagur announced. And then, looking at the wine in her hand, added, “A  _ stiff  _ drink.”

Odd as that conversation had been, Wyetta didn’t have time to dwell on it. Lilja was insisting they dance once more together, the way they had when they’d been little and the occassional bard had arrived on a ship to fill the town with music for a night. And then, giggling, Lilja had deposited Wyetta in front of Robert. She refused to speak to Wyetta for the rest of the night until she danced with him. Sheepishly, he offered her his hand, and she took it easily enough.

“Everyone’s acting very oddly tonight,” she confided in him.

“Are they?” He spun her around in a circle, which made her snort.

“They are. I wonder if weddings are always like this?”

“If the bride’s dearest friend is still single, then yes.”

“Is that what this is about?” Wyetta took a turn to spin  _ Robert  _ around, and earned his windchime laugh for it. “I didn’t realize Lilja wanted me married off so badly.”

“She just wants you to feel the same joy she’s feeling,” Robert reasoned.

“What would you know? You’re single, too.”

“We could fix that,” Robert mentioned casually.  _ Too  _ casually.

And finally, all the  _ hinting  _ broke through to Wyetta. She stumbled over the next step in the dance. “W-we could?”

“If you wanted,” he allowed, still affecting that aloof tone.

So Wyetta took it as permission to kiss him.

Right there, on the dance floor, Wyetta had her first kiss ever. The crowd hooted and hollered, and Robert clung to her sleeves as though he were afraid she’d pull away and never touch him again. But she didn’t want to. She liked this, the closeness with someone who’d given her reason to laugh and reason to fight. She liked seeing a new side of him after all this time.

For an entire year, it felt like life wasn’t so bad. Like the world itself was glittering with beauty, like the earth was softer and the clouds more plush. Like rain was nothing but a means of nourishment for the crops. That the death of a sheep was nothing but a natural part of life. It was strange, how Wyetta’s perspective could change over something so simple.

How quickly she could forget something paramount to surviving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everybody, don't let my serious backstories fool you. During actual gameplay my characters do such wonderful things as accidentally dimension-dooring themselves into the ocean, or drinking so much I get possessed and steal a thing. I still haven't figured out what I stole, by the way. I hid it too well while still turnt.
> 
> Pathfinder is like the _least_ serious game and yet I'm out here writing this nonsense.


	6. The Perfidy

“Please,” she said.

There was no teasing. There was no joking. It was rare, for Ólafur, and even rarer for the two of them together. But they sat opposite that little table, and neither seemed willing to break eye contact with the other.

“No,” he answered.

“Please,” she repeated.

“No,” he said in kind.

“Please.”

“I can do this all day, girlie.”

“Likewise.”

“Do ye even know what ye risk if I do what ye ask?”

“No,” Wyetta said honestly. “You won’t tell me.”

Grunting, Ólafur said, “With good fucking reason. It’s the stuff of nightmares, it is, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, let alone me new granddaughter. In law or not.”

Wyetta ignored the flutter in her chest at his words. “It’s only a risk. Not a sure thing. So come.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“I’ve seen you leave your house before!” Wyetta burst out, “I’ve seen you go a  _ mile  _ out into the woods. What’s so different if the direction is west instead of north?”

“Curses are wicked magic. They’re more likely to react when it’s more cruel to, you know.”

“That’s just superstition talking. You don’t know for sure.”

“Isn’t it better to be safe than sorry? Isn’t it better if I don’t risk turning my grandson’s wedding into a hellscape of horrors?”

“Why can’t you just be  _ honest?  _ We  _ offered  _ to have the ceremony near here, and you refused. You’re just  _ frightened.  _ This is nothing more than a selfish excuse to keep yourself isolated from everyone else. We’re going to be the guardians, soon, so why can’t you get off your ass for  _ once  _ in your  _ sorry  _ life and let  _ someone else  _ handle things, already?”

Clearly, even after all this time, Ólafur had never learned how to handle Wyetta’s outbursts. She stormed out of his hut in such a fury that his tawny owl screeched as the door slammed, and she didn’t even realize she was crying until she was almost back home. Furiously, she scrubbed at her cheeks, refusing to let her father see a trace of them. He might think she was getting cold feet and use it as an excuse to delay the ceremony.

Absolutely, under no circumstances, could she allow  _ that  _ to happen. And so, when she awoke with icy moonlight streaming through the curtains in her room, she was confused. A tiny knocking sound against the window frame let her know  _ why  _ she was conscious, but when she opened the shutters and pushed aside the curtains, her blood ran cold at seeing Robert there.

Had he - but no, he wouldn’t, he was even more sure of the wedding than she was. She swallowed, then hissed, “What’re you doing here? You know if my father catches you at this time, he’ll assume we couldn’t wait for our wedding night.”

Though he had opened his mouth to explain at her question, Robert’s entire face flamed bright red when she mentioned Papa. “Er, no, that’s not - I got a letter,” he mumbled, then held a small, rolled up piece of parchment to her.

“Okay?” Wyetta didn’t take it, knowing that she was too out of practice with trying to read for her to manage such in the middle of the night, with sleep still clinging to her eyes. “What does it say that’s so urgent it couldn’t wait for tomorrow?”

“Ólafur,” Robert breathed. “He wants to tell us something.”

Within ten minutes Wyetta was dressed and her hair was tied back, and then they were off, running through the pastures and into the woods in an effort to get there before they would be missed. Robert clasped her hand in his own, allowed her to lead the way with her superior night vision, and only spoke once during the trip.

“The hair at the sides of your head,” he panted, his breath pluming like white ghosts, there and gone again. “It’s all fuzzy. You’ll need to shave it again soon.”

Touching her skin lightly, Wyetta smiled at the telltale feeling of soft fuzz. “You’ll help me, won’t you? Dearest husband?”

Robert squeaked, which was rather gratifying.

Ólafur was waiting for them when they arrived, the owl perched on his arm rather than his shoulder like usual. He held it like he expected he’d need to help it launch into flight at any moment, though for hunting or for protection, Wyetta wasn’t sure. Wordlessly, he turned and led them around the side of the spire, and then  _ onto  _ it.

Its slope was treacherous. Steep enough that Wyetta almost wanted to go onto all fours, and with too smooth a finish to allow for proper footholds. She and Robert picked their way up, while Ólafur waited with an inscrutable expression. Luckily they didn’t have to climb very far before they came upon what he’d wanted to show them.

A door, which Wyetta supposed had at one point in time been ground-level. Decades, maybe even centuries had shaped everything around it to make it even harder to access, but it was undeniable in its existence. Small, remarkably plain for how, well, remarkable it was. There wasn’t even a door handle. Only a carving of vines and leaves around the edge, which Wyetta thought were morning glories.

“Linnorm King Hekla Sabelsdóttir,” Ólafur intoned. “Bore the curse of the Eternal Guard. Until the curse is broken, she must have at least one living member of a standing army who has sworn fealty to her.” It was strange, how his words carried. Wyetta could see the tops of trees stretching out where the land sloped downwards towards the river bank. Each shiver of wind through them made her think they were carrying his voice far, far away.

“As ye can imagine, that was easy enough when she was alive. They found out the hard way afterwards, though, the curse don’t take too kindly to being thought  _ dead.  _ If the people of this land couldn’t be trusted to keep a living guard, the curse itself would do it. Or at least, it’d keep an  _ unliving  _ guard, ye ken?”

Wyetta and Robert nodded, rendered mute by the night.

“There only needs to be one guardian to keep the curse in check. Just one. But if ye both have yer hearts set on it, then come here after yer wedding. Press yer palms to the door, and pledge your fealty to the long-dead king. There’s weapons in there, the livery of me lord, everything ye need to be a knight. But ye need to be sure. Ye need to know, if ye ever doubt, if ye walk away wishing ye could abandon yer post, she’ll hear ye. King Hekla’ll know. And she can’t have a guard made up of traitors.

“I won’t… tell ye not to. I’ve never met a finer pair of heroes in all me days. So no matter what ye decide to do, I… I’m proud. Ye hear me? I’m proud of ye.”

Pain glinted in the amber fire of his eyes, and Ólafur’s owl gave a sad,  _ who?  _ “Them, ye daft motherfucker,” Ólafur growled, and it was as though the spell was broken.

“You know, I always thought I liked that owl,” Wyetta mused. Robert snorted and then covered his mouth with his hand in a futile attempt to hide his smile.

“Ye best start thinking what kinda familiar ye’d want too,” Ólafur added. “It’s just about the only good thing I got out of this deal.”

“You’ll get a sheepdog,” Robert told her. “Since you’ve been around them your whole life.”

“In that case, maybe you’ll have a mountain lion.”

“But… I’ve never even seen one. What do you mean?”

Clapping his grandson on the back, Ólafur told him as if confiding some great secret, “I think she was talking about herself, dumbass.”

By the time Wyetta was back in her bed, she was feeling much better about the coming night. Even if Ólafur didn’t end up coming, or if she had bags under her eyes the whole day. It was all going to work out alright, because she’d have Robert by her side and his ring on her finger. For the rest of her life.

Later, much later, every single sunset would find Wyetta contemplating the same thought. The same, bitter, angry thought. That she wished time could freeze there. On that final, hopeful night, when she was untouchable and the world had seemed kind rather than cruel.

Time, however, was just like everything else. Cruel. Relentless. Uncaring.


	7. The Peripeteia

She’d greeted the dawn with a smile on her face and a song in her heart. As she sang it, Lilja had winced and begged her to please, keep it down. “My little one won’t be born tone-deaf. If they are, I’m personally coming to your house and killing you. Even if you and Robert are  _ mid-coitous,  _ you hear me?”

“What a frightening thought!” Wyetta sing-songed, then dodged the pillow Lilja lobbed at her. “Hey, I thought you were trying to fix my hair, not ruin it.”

“I’ve changed my mind. You’re a terrible friend and you’ve lost matron of honor rights.” Lilja placed her palm on her swollen belly and smiled smugly.

“Fine by me. Robert’s seen me covered in blood and dirt, I’m certain he won’t mind  _ what  _ I look like on our wedding day.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, get back here you.”

The sun beat down on them. It hadn’t rained in weeks, which had some farmers worried. In fact, it was rather  _ hot,  _ strange after how chilly the previous night had been. Wyetta wasn’t thinking about the grass crunching under her bare feet when she walked towards the little temple of Desna at the edge of the town. She wasn’t thinking about much of anything, besides the look on Robert’s face when he saw her in her dress.

Wasn’t it ridiculous, to remember him as the pouty and angry ten year old he’d once been? And yet the thought melted Wyetta’s heart, had her slowing to a properly sedate pace. They were married just outside the building, not a flower to be seen, but Lilja had wrapped ribbons around sticks to form beautiful silk facsimiles for Wyetta’s bouquet. In a word, it was perfect.

Just before she’d turned around to throw her bouquet, she’d caught sight of a certain recluse hanging off to the side of the festivities. He had his cloak’s hood up, despite the hot weather, but his horns had pulled it all out of shape. Wyetta couldn’t help the smile on her lips, even as she tossed her “bouquet” with pinpoint accuracy. She knew she’d succeeded when she heard a loud, “Again?”

“You can’t escape your fate, Dagur!” Lilja teased, and Kari laughed with her until Dagur’s face was turning a worrying shade of maroon.

After that Wyetta danced with Robert twice, once with him leading and once with herself doing so, and though some of their neighbors hooted and hollered most were more focused on their sheer glee at the copious amounts of mutton and delicate cheeses being served. Wyetta caught a couple of confused mutters around the edges of the party, people wondering where the wedding cake was, and she snickered at the memory of Lilja’s face when Wyetta had said she wanted sweet buns instead of some more grand confectionary.

They were piled up, now, each one dripping with honey and cinnamon and looking good enough to make her lick her lips. “You know, your mouth makes it look like you’ve just eaten someone alive when you do that,” someone said from behind her.

  
“Thanks for coming, Dagur,” she deadpanned.

“Thanks for throwing your stupid flowers at me,” he replied sulkily.

Softening, Wyetta patted his head. He was too shocked at being treated like he was younger than her to even shake her off. “Thank you for coming, for real,” Wyetta said. “This might not’ve happened if you hadn’t given me Lilja’s bouquet.”

“Well, someone had to help you,” Dagur shook her off and then snatched a sweet bun with more force than necessary. “If I didn’t, I was afraid you and Robert would end up dancing around each other forever. No one wanted to see that, least of all me.”

“I didn’t even realize we were dancing,” she admitted.

“I know. You were always so clever when it came to anyone other than yourself, after all. I know you got Lilja to bother me about Kari, you know. You’re lucky he’s not just a pretty face.”

“Am I?”

“He’s - you haven’t talked to him much, have you? But he’s really, just so  _ passionate.  _ And I don’t mean it like that, wipe that smug look off your face. You know how he’s a shipwright? He puts so much love into those things, I don’t think they’ll ever sink. They’d be too afraid of disappointing him. Shut up, I know that’s not how ships work, but you should see the details. The work he puts in to figuring out how to vent water, the hidden little cupboards in spaces I thought were too small to be useful…”

“You really do love him, don’t you,” Wyetta said softly. “Would that I could attend your wedding, next. Maybe you could have it on one of his boats.”

“Maybe,” Dagur replied, and he was so obviously fond. And then he sighed, and looked up at her through bangs darker than most in the village. “You never let me apologize properly, you know. You should.”

“But I’m not angry with you?”

Sighing heavily once more, Dagur shook his head at her. “That isn’t always the point of an apology. You’ve never really hated yourself, have you?” Wyetta froze, staring at him in confusion. “You’ve doubted yourself, I’m sure. Everyone has. There’ve been plenty of times when I saw you feeling down or frustrated or, I don’t know, any number of fucking things. But I don’t think you’ve got it in your heart to hate, and if you’ve never felt that, you can’t know what it’s like.”

“I’m - I’m sorry,” Wyetta said.

“Don’t be, it isn’t your fault!” Dagur slapped her back and then bit into his bun. “It’s no one’s fault, really. My parents didn’t  _ tell  _ me I needed to carry on the family name, I decided that by myself. And Robert didn’t  _ tell  _ me I was keeping him from following his passions. And you didn’t  _ tell  _ me to make an ass of myself. But I did those things, and I was wrong. So I need to apologize. And you, Mrs. Sveinnsdóttir, need to let me.”

_ Mrs. Sveinsdóttir  _ echoed in her head. Clearly, her dazed expression was obvious, and so Dagur laughed and pulled something out from his pocket. “It isn’t much, Kari suggested it. He said white really isn’t your color.”

Still in the midst of reeling, Wyetta was halfway to untying the twine holding the brown paper in place before she realized what she was doing. And then it was falling away, to reveal a beautiful, knit shawl. The red was almost exactly the same color as the dress she’d worn to Lilja’s wedding. “Thank you,” she said, happily pulling it over her shoulders.

“You won’t be too warm? You don’t need to wear every gift you get today, you know, you’ll be weighed down to the ground before the day’s over if you do.”

“It’s fine.” Wyetta smiled as she stuck her fingers through the holes in the yarn, and Dagur shrugged as if to say he’d never really understand her.

Despite what he’d said, when Bjarki offered Wyetta  _ and  _ Robert both a pair of beautiful swords, she immediately belted it on over her dress. “Weapons for the guardians,” he teased, prompting Robert to demurely thank him.

Slowly, the sun began to set, and Papa took charge of lighting the bonfire so the party could continue. Wyetta tried lurking about the edges of the gathering to see if she could spot Ólafur once again, to no avail; she was certain the loud “congratulations” that followed wherever she went had kept him scurrying away. That was fine, though. He’d done as she’d asked. He’d been brave. And tomorrow, after her wedding night and after swearing fealty to a king she’d never meet, she’d thank him.

Except, that wasn’t what happened.

Because Robert caught her around the waist, kissed her between her horns. Wyetta leaned back, smiled down at him, and then captured his lips in something a bit too salacious to usually be allowed in public. Papa made some kind of disgusted sound to her side, and Robert’s Mama comforted him with, “Now now, isn’t it good they’re in love?”

And then, with the sounds of her friends and family laughing in her ears, Wyetta smelled rot.


	8. The Coronation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @ the one person who kudos'ed this: sorry for leaving you hanging so long. Can't promise that this update is worth the wait... unless you like angst, in which case I guarantee it was. Either way, you won't have to wait much longer for the rest of the story!

Everything went wrong so quickly. In hindsight, it seemed a miracle she hadn’t simply frozen and stared around her in horror. But at the time, her heart had done something strange - as though it had turned to stone.

Someone screamed. She and Robert had broken apart before she even knew who it was, and then her sword was in her hands. She slashed at the creature that was lurching towards her before she could even see what it was, but the body that had so willingly thrown itself upon her blade was unmistakable.

“Zombies!” She cried, just as the monster she’d impaled _exploded._

Rot and filth filled her mouth, her nose, her stomach. She fought down a gag and spat at the ground, then turned and saw Robert with his own sword out. “Everyone, _scatter,_” she demanded. “Get down on the ground and crawl towards your homes as quickly as you can!”

And then she blinked, and the world was in darkness.

It wouldn’t last long. She could only seem to make this strange power work on rare occasions, and was glad it hadn’t abandoned her now. The zombies shambled about, moaning pitifully as they searched for prey at entirely the wrong height. There was a muffled _thump _as one tripped, and then a scream cut short a moment later. Wyetta felt horrible guilt and relief rise up in tandem. It hadn’t been Lilja. It hadn’t been Robert’s Mama.

“We need to get to the spire,” Robert told her, his back pressed to hers.

“Yes,” she agreed, and then they began side-stepping in tandem, getting away from the supernatural shadows and towards the natural ones of the forest.

Things were somehow even worse there. First, because they came upon a body lying on the ground, with a familiar cloak tangled around it. Nearby, there lay a tawny owl, sanguine staining its breast.

“Grandpa?” Robert choked out, his voice oddly plaintive.

Something groaned at him, and Wyetta turned to swing at it without a second thought. Her blade cleaved into the left shoulder and _stuck _there, yanking her off balance when the thing lunged towards her _husband. _Thankfully, no matter how hurt Robert was, his training had done its job. He lopped off its head and then Wyetta’s blade came free as the corpse’s knees hit the ground. She was just about to thank him when -

_Whumpf. _Just like last time, the thing burst outward in a storm of shredded, desiccated flesh. The iron-tasting dust that had once been its blood hovered in the air, making Robert choke and cough as it stuck in his lungs. Wyetta grasped his arm and pulled him after her, unable to offer comfort. They needed to get to the spire. The king needed a living guard.

Along the way Wyetta lost track of how many zombies she cut down. Eventually she resorted to simply cutting off a leg or two and leaving them to crawl after her, hoping that they’d give up as soon as the curse had been appeased. She wasn’t sure, though. And Robert was having trouble keeping up.

By the time she could see the structure rising out of the earth, the smell of smoke had risen up behind her. She didn’t turn around, terrified of what she might see. Was the town ablaze? The forest? If it was the latter, she hoped everyone was okay enough to dig a fire break. There wasn’t much wind to carry the embers, but with the dryness of the recent weeks…

No time to dwell. She all but dragged Robert up the last few feet to the door, then pressed her palm to it. He did the same, hand shaking against the stone, and for a long moment nothing happened. Had they done something wrong?

And then it began to glow. A low, purple light, which Wyetta only saw because her eyes had sharpened during the battle. The door swung open slowly, and Wyetta all but fell through. It was all she could do to keep herself and Robert from rolling across the sloping floor, and it was a good thing they hadn’t, because it was littered with metal.

Armor, weapons, even some strange things which Wyetta thought might’ve been torture devices. She shuddered, and then scooped Robert into her arms. “Wait, put me down, you don’t have to,” he said, though it was weak and breathless.

“I know you twisted your ankle back there,” she told him. “It’s just a few feet.”

“I was supposed to be the one to carry you over our wedding threshold.”

His joke fell flat, but she still forced a laugh. “You can’t lift me, and we both know it.”

“Maybe I could, you don’t - ” His voice cut off in favor of a hacking cough. “Ugh, this smoke.”

It was true that it was filtering into the room, though most was hanging near the door, the “higher ground” so to speak. Wyetta picked her way across the stone floor, her talons clicking with each step, until finally they reached the end of the chamber.

Left was a set of stairs going up, and to her right were stairs going down. But Wyetta was only concerned with what was directly in front of her; a dias, upon which lay a casket hewn from the same stone as the rest of the structure. A woman had been carved onto it, laying upon her back with a greataxe resting atop her.

She looked young and beautiful, with hair so long it was practically a nest cradling her entire body. The waves of it had been carved to lovingly cradle her simple gown, and the axe had been so expertly carved as to give the impression of having a great weight. Wyetta looked at her, and tried to figure out what she might have been like in life. Had Hekla been delighted that her curse would not cut her life short, as so many did? Or had she mourned for the lives it would claim, even though she would never live to see them?

Not that it mattered, one way or the other. Wyetta set Robert down, helped stabilize his footing, and then took a knee. He did the same beside her, and if he was leaning against her, well, it wasn’t as though a dead king demanded propriety. Only loyalty. Only obedience.

Wasn’t that enough?

“I, Wyetta Sveinnsdóttir, do pledge my fealty to King Hekla Sabelsdóttir, and promise to follow her and her alone for the rest of my days, until such time as my service is no longer required.”

“I, Robert Sigurdursson, do pledge my fealty to King Hekla Sabelsdóttir and promise to follow her and her alone for the rest of my days, until such time as my service is no longer required.”

Nothing happened. At first, Wyetta thought it was some kind of delayed reaction, much like the door had had. But then, when time continued to pass and nothing changed, she began to doubt.

“Did it work?” She wondered aloud.

“I don’t - Wyetta, behind you!”

From out of the smoke came a shuffling noise. At first, it was just the quiet sound of bare feet dragging on stone, but then there was another - this one a grating screech, probably belonging to armored boots. And then more, footsteps that _slapped _heavily down, the near-silent shuffle of leather boots. Countless footsteps resolving themselves into countless shadows emerging from the orange-lit doorway.

It was the zombies.

Before she could think Wyetta was already on her feet, sword once again held before her. Her teeth were bared, a threatening display utterly lost on the mindless monsters. But they ignored her. They didn’t try to slam into her to attack, or claw or bite, nothing. They ambled past her and to the right side of the chamber, and then they began to descend.

“They’re going back,” she breathed. “They’re going back. We did it.” Turning, she cheered, “Robert, we did - ”

Only to see that he’d collapsed on the ground.

If her life could not have ended on the eve of her wedding, then she wished it could’ve ended there, instead. In that stone room, when dread had only just begun to claw its insidious way into her belly. When the stone had only just begun to crack around her heart. It would’ve been better than what came next, an eternity of that single, terrible moment.

Because of course the days that followed were worse.


	9. The Descent

The fire raged around Hekla’s spire for days. Wyetta kept the door shut as much as she could, to spare Robert the smoke, and when she left it was never for very long. She came back with burns on her arms and legs, her wedding dress in tatters, and Robert never stopped worrying about her. But his leg was properly broken, and he needed to heal. She had always been sturdier than him.

Her beautiful shawl and sword stayed with Robert. If they were ruined… but she couldn’t think about it. Instead, she carried an axe, something heavy and brutal. She used it to cut down forest near the spire, in the hopes that it might act as a firebreak. Keep the heat and smoke from getting worse. And, at first, Robert seemed to be improving.

If only Wyetta could’ve made it to the village in those first few days. Maybe things would’ve turned out differently. Maybe she could’ve found the tiny, ancient cleric and had her help Robert. Maybe she could’ve relaxed long enough to keep herself from breaking entirely. Maybe she could’ve spoken to Papa one last time.

But the fire was impenetrable, even for her sturdy skin. She busied herself with carrying water to and from the river, and prowling the edges of the forest for animals frantically trying to escape the conflagration. She hunted enough to keep herself and Robert alive. She boiled her own dress and tore it to strips to bandage his leg. If only it had been enough. If only.

On the fourth day after their wedding, Robert got sick.

He begged her to kill him. There was only one thing it could’ve been, this wasting disease that left him gaunt. He coughed up blood, first in specks and then in great, wet globules. They both knew it. They knew even before the scent of rot set in.

But Wyetta couldn’t do it. She couldn’t, when there was even the slightest chance that he might fight through. That he might win.

He didn’t.

She couldn’t bury him. She couldn’t even try. She sat over his body and sobbed, pathetic as she knew it was, and before her eyes had run dry he was climbing back to his feet, shambling down the staircase all the other zombies had descended. And Wyetta…

Wyetta let him.

Outside, the fire had all but burned itself out. Her lovely forest was nothing but smouldering cinders, and she could make it down to the village, now. Her feet were a monstrosity of thick, leathery flesh. No amount of heat hiding, banked in the soil, could frighten her. She probably should’ve gone before Robert had. Before he’d. Before.

Dazed and alone, she wandered. She wandered all the way to where she knew her home should be. Or, her Papa’s home, she supposed. She was meant to live with Robert now, after the wedding. Except, it didn’t matter, because Ólafur’s hut had burned with the forest. And Papa’s house… Papa’s house…

Worse than the bodies Wyetta found were the ones she _didn’t. _Lilja was nowhere to be seen; Bjarki’s charred, rotting husk lay at the remnants of the well. A gentle breeze blew the ash across the ground, swirling it much the same way snow would swirl in the winter. Soon, now, Wyetta would be facing the very real threat of starvation.

How could something so petty as _food _matter at a time like this?

No matter how hard she searched, she couldn’t find Papa. Robert’s Mama was little more than a few shreds of flesh, only recognizable for the tattered scraps of fabric left on her. How badly must the zombies have mutilated her, to prevent her from turning? She’d almost made it to the river, she’d been safe from the fire, and even then it hadn’t mattered.

Nothing had mattered. Forcing Robert to run on his broken leg. Swearing their fealty together. Giving up her last chance at freedom.

_Fear _wasn’t quite the right word for it. Neither was sadness. After Robert’s fair head had disappeared down into the gloom, Wyetta hadn’t cried at all. She wanted to, felt like the gritty ash in her eyes was _clinging _and _itching _and if only tears could wash it away, she might find the whole thing just a horrible hallucination. But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t cry.

Eventually, wandering the crumbling ruins of her former home got to be too much for her. Wyetta wandered back into the woods, only vaguely recognizing that Ólafur’s body was missing from where it had fallen. She wasn’t sure what that meant. She didn’t want to think about it.

Trees stood barren of not only their leaves and needles, but even their branches. Spires of black reaching crookedly into the sky. Thin, and so fragile she could hear some _cracking _even then. As she walked to the tomb, Robert’s and Hekla’s and her own, she tried not to find it appropriate. Dagur had told her she didn’t hate herself. She didn’t intend to start now.

Easier said than done, of course, but keeping herself too tired to think was a good enough start.

Another distraction came to her in the form of the wildlife that slowly trickled back into the area. Most of it was small animals such as mice, who searched for their stores of food frantically as soon as the ground was cool enough to allow it. One animal in particular stood out, however, and she met it when she was dragging dead rabbits towards the spire from where she’d trapped them, near the closest living copse of trees.

Hissing interrupted her. She turned to the side, and saw the telltale white stripe like a miniature, inverse version of herself. Tiny teeth were bared by a pair of pulled-back lips, and while the black nose was rather cute, the _thump-thump, thump-thump _of stomping feet was an obvious, territorial threat.

Whatever. Wyetta turned away from the skunk and continued onwards.

_Hiss. _Wyetta sighed, wondering when the skunk would realize she was no threat to it and its useless land.

Of course, then the little bastard decided to _spray her._

Something stopped her from simply skinning it alive and leaving it to bleed out. Maybe it was the frothing rage that took her breath away, after so long (days? Weeks? It _couldn’t_ have been months) of _nothing. _Maybe it was the fact that she was thinking about how she’d have to eat flesh which stank worse than (not sulfur, not sulfur). Maybe it was the sudden rush to get to the river and scrub at her skin.

Whatever the reason, the little cretin lived, and Wyetta _seethed._

Five days later, she caught it going through her meager stores for the winter, and she managed to clip it with a kick before it could dodge out of the way, screeching. “Get _out,” _she said. Or tried to, at least. Nothing came out of her throat, and so she touched it lightly, shocked and somewhat frightened.

At her feet, the skunk was sulking backwards, beady black eyes glaring at her. She hardly noticed. “I, I,” she tried again. “Can I… my voice…” It was hoarse, but it was _there. _Relief made her knees give out.

How long had it been since the last time she’d spoken? Since the last time she’d had a reason to speak, or a person to speak to?

_Don’t think about it. Don’t think at all._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The penultimate, could be an alternate (very literal) title. Anyone excited to see the end of this?


	10. The Departure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy (belated) international women's day! Wyetta deserves a holiday after all the shit she's dealt with.
> 
> So I dunno if anyone enjoyed this enough to want to see more of Wyetta's, uh, struggles, but if you _did_ please let me know! Since Wyetta's not in use for any campaigns at the moment, I could pretty easily make up a party for her and give them some adventures to go on... but that would be a lot of work if this fic only had one reader, lmao.
> 
> Anyway I hope anyone who sees this has a lovely day!! <3 Thank you for clicking on my wacky ttrpg writing.

Days and weeks and months. Wyetta kept wishing for time to _stop, _and time kept cruelly refusing her. And that stupid, horrible, _miserable _skunk resisted every gods-damned effort she made to get it to _leave already._

“If I can’t get rid of you, I could probably name you,” Wyetta muttered at the thing sullenly. Snow had piled until it had actually covered the door, and so the two of them were stuck in the cold, stone room together. The skunk, obviously, was a poor conversation partner and didn’t answer her. “Something ugly. You deserve an ugly name.”

But the only ugly name she could think of was _Wyetta, _and she wasn’t going to name the fucking beast after _herself. _So she decided on Millicent, on a whim more than anything. A half-remembered name from an ill-mannered merchant who’d once visited -

_Don’t. Don’t think. Just work._

Working outside was no longer an option, and Wyetta refused to go down into the crypt. So instead, she climbed _up. _To her shock, the first floor she came across was some kind of library, filled with dozens of shelves of books. They’d been packed so tightly onto the shelves that even the slant of the room hadn’t knocked them free, and Wyetta was almost afraid to pull one out lest it crumble in her hands.

Not that it mattered, anyway. Who else was going to be crawling about looking for books? So she grit her teeth and just _did it, _a maroon leather-bound volume falling into her hands. Opening it, she thought at first that her Common was entirely more rusty than she’d thought, but then she realized it wasn’t in Common at all.

Long hours passed while she hunted for a book she could actually read, albeit slowly. Eventually she succeeded. Not in finding a book in Common, no, but in finding one written in _abyssal. _She didn’t want to read it. She spent a long time staring down at the familiar-unfamiliar letters, the first page open but not a single word read.

Still, it was better than nothing.

Life was cruel. Every time she found a bit of peace, it was stolen.

People wanted the newly vacated land. People wanted the glory of defeating a zombie hoard. People came expecting _something, _and instead they found Wyetta.

“Who are you,” Wyetta had blurted, when the first of the men had come over the hill of ash. Wyetta was in the midst of burying the bodies she’d found. Quickly, before the last of them became completely impossible to recognize. She wanted to give as many gravestones with their names as she could, and she’d left it too long already.

“Me?” The man looked at her, her armor and shovel, the violet livery which belonged to no living king. At her side lay a discarded axe and tower shield. Behind her sat a cross “Who are you?”

“I am Wyetta,” she said dumbly.

The man sounded cautious now, clearly unsure how to treat a strange tiefling he’d found in the most unexpected of places. “Is this your land?”

“No,” she answered honestly.

“Oh, well. That’s fine then.” The man turned back towards the river.

“Why do you ask?” Wyetta said. What she meant was, _why are you here?_

Luckily, he answered both. “Me and my crew heard what happened,” he told her. “I’d been to the town a few times, y’know. Thought it was a shame, but also thought it’s about time I settle down for good. Got together a few other men and - ”

“I don’t remember you visiting,” Wyetta told him numbly.

“What? You were… are you one of the villagers?”

Abruptly, Wyetta realized that she hated the pity that was welling up in that unfamiliar face. And so, before he could say anything else, she told him the truth.

“I’m the last guardian of a Linnorm King’s lands, and you’re trespassing.”

Luckily that was all it took to get the first man to leave. He was clearly unsettled by her, more afraid of what she might do than he was of derailing his own half-baked plans. But Wyetta knew that wasn’t going to always be the case. She knew it, and yet the first time she had to cut down a man, she still didn’t feel prepared.

It was just so… _easy. _Somehow she’d thought the zombies’ flesh had been weakened by their disease and made them easier to cut through. But that didn’t seem to be the case; humans, as much as their undead counterparts, had such fragile skin and bones. Her axe cleaved them more easily than it did wood.

Of course, wood didn’t _scream._

She didn’t feel guilty for what she’d done. She couldn’t. There wasn’t any more room inside her for guilt, not with every inch taken up by the stony, unyielding _loathing. _It was darker than the granite that made up the spire. At least that was shot through with shimmering lines and flakes, more beautiful under the open sun than she thought it had any right to be. No, her hatred was plain, simple black, the color of charcoal.

One day, more than a year after… after, it stormed. Wyetta was already in the midst of a battle, swarmed by goblins, of all things. She killed them without hesitation, refusing to spare a thought for the children she might leave orphaned, or the wives she might make widows of. They’d known the risk when they’d entered battle. They’d _chosen _this.

Rain pounded down onto her armor and plastered her hair between the joints. A small hand grasped the end of her locks to try to yank her off balance; she sliced the scheming head off its shoulders without a second glance. Lightning flashed, then struck near enough by to leave her ears ringing. Luckily her back was to the flash, so she had an easy enough time impaling another goblin while he was blinded.

Dawn broke at the same time as the storm did. The final of her enemies had fled, screaming something about a _Stormbreaker. _Wyetta thought it was just nonsense, driven by fear and exhaustion addled minds. But it had a ring to it.

And she couldn’t think of herself as Sveinsdóttir anymore. Not after what she’d done. She didn’t deserve that name, the name of the man who had held her in his arms more times than she could count.

Time continued, and continued, and continued. Years became one decade, then two. Wyetta tried to stop counting, and found that she couldn’t. Especially when she realized that the irritating skunk hadn’t aged one bit since first meeting her, except perhaps for a couple of grey furs which had snuck their way onto her muzzle.

“Millicent, I know you’re my familiar, but be honest. Do I look old?”

Millicent stomped, and Wyetta took that as a yes.

In a lot of ways, she felt old. It was in the way she ran her fingers over the back of the stone chair she’d first noticed after that mammoth storm. How long had it spent, buried under first foliage, and then ash? And when she sat on it, she felt as though it fit, the unforgiving and straight lines perfectly matched to how little she wanted _comfort._

In a lot of others, however, she didn’t feel her age at all. It made things all the more shocking when something reminded her exactly how long it had been. Like when, one evening, she was eating a stew. It was thin and watery, but Millicent was happily making a mess of herself eating her own portion, so Wyetta figured neither of them would get food poisoning from poor ingredients this time. It reminded her, there’d been a time when the tavern had gotten a bad shipment of grain, and everyone in -

Everyone in… town?

Except the town had a name. One she couldn’t remember.

Wyetta dropped her bowl. Millicent snuffled at the spilled contents, but abandoned it in favor of following her master. Wyetta wandered up the stairs, up and up and up, in a haze that felt alarmingly like the early days. Like being in mourning. She wasn’t sure why she’d climbed the stairs instead of going to her chair. She just… did.

Up at the very top, there was a bedroom. The thing sat untouched by time, much the way Wyetta wished she was. She never used it. She preferred to sleep in a bedroll in the armory, or at least what she thought was meant to be an armory. But the bed was there, and she sat on it now, listening to the creak of bedsprings that hadn’t been touched for who knew how long.

When was the last time someone had touched her without trying to kill her?

Snuffling drew her gaze downwards, to where Millicent was trying to climb her way onto the cot. Wyetta picked her up with a huff, saying, “You’re better at digging than you are at climbing. It’s because you’re so fat.”

Millicent huffed, and pressed her cold nose against Wyetta’s shoulder, and refused to move for a long time after that. Wyetta held her, unsure what else to do. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t going to try to remember. Remembering was just something that… happened. She didn’t seek it out. What kind of madman sought out pain?

Wyetta Stormbreaker was very good at waiting. Wyetta Sveinnsdóttir had many skills, she was a fair shephard and determined swordsman and kind friend. But Wyetta Stormbreaker did one thing well, and that one thing was what she did, when she held her skunk to her chest and wanted to hate the creature.

It was what she did when she ate. It was what she did when she fought. It was what she did when she sat, surveying land upon which nothing grew but crosses and tombstones, the last of the skeletons of trees fallen decades ago. Uninhibited view down to the dark stone of the riverbank. The sound of crashing ocean waves in her ears, and dark clouds roiling overhead. There was going to be another storm, a big one.

She sat with her tower shield between her legs. Her axe rested against the side of her chair, and Millicent slept in front of her. She crossed her arms on top of the shield, but didn’t let herself rest her chin on them. She kept her head up, eyes two glaring, deep, black pits that _dared _anyone to challenge the Eternal Guard. The vassal of a Linnorm King. The final living member of Hekla Sabelsdóttir’s standing military.

Let them come, and let them fall before her blade, until such time as her service was no longer required. And then, let the world _burn._


End file.
